Golden Beads

The Golden Beads are the material most essential for teaching the decimal system to children in Montessori schools. It consists of unit beads which are just individual beads, ten bars which are short lengths of wire strung with ten beads, hundred squares which are made of 10 ten bars wired together to make a square, and thousand cubes which are made by wiring together 10 hundred squares.

Hundred squares and thousand cubes take a long time to make and can be rather expensive, so when doing activities that use a lot of hundreds and thousands, wooden representations of hundreds and thousands are used in the place of the beaded kind.

The least expensive unit beads available from the vendors below are a little less than a penny a piece.
The beads should be between 6 and 7.5 millimeters in diameter. They should be as spherical as possible so that they are equally wide as long.

An alternative to the golden beads that are used in many public elementary schools are base ten blocks. These are made out of plastic and are a bit larger than the golden beads. I have not yet found these at a lower cost than the equivalent golden beads. If you can find a good deal on a used set they would be fine to use instead.

I've included a comparison of what an equivalent amount of Golden Beads would cost (assuming the least expensive option). I've listed prices assuming wooden (w) and then beaded (b) hundreds and thousands.